The only reason I haven't shot you yet is because he's the one who should get to do it," I say. "Stay away from him or I'll decide I no longer care.

"You die, I die too.” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions."

I am still the person who would have died rather than kill you

Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it.

I ignore my fear,” he says. “When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn’t exist.” I stare at him for a second. I can’t help it. To me there’s a difference between not being afraid and acting in spite of fear, as he does.

I see a kind of thirst in her expression, the same one I saw when she told me about her brother in the back room of the tattoo parlor. Before the attack simulation I might have called it a thirst for justice, or even revenge, but now I am able to identify it as a thirst for blood. And even as it frightens me, I understand it. Which should probably frighten me even more.

That our world is so massive that it is completely out of our control, that we cannot possibly be as large as we feel.